Tag: fantasy fiction

Happy to report the delivery of a bouncing, boisterous new novel, weighing in at 136,000 words. The sequel to The Guns of Ivrea is tentatively titled The Witch of Torinia and I’m hopeful that Solaris Books will launch it shortly after the New Year. Yet it wasn’t an easy birth by any means. Apart from the self-imposed pressure of avoiding dreaded “sequelitis”, writing a follow-on book (whether for a duology or a longer series) contains some particular pitfalls for authors. First, you’ve created a range of characters and like wayward teenage children, they stopped listening to you probably before Book One ended and now do what they like. With umpteen plot threads spraying out like a spider on crystal meth, the chief danger is a sequel that begins to run away from the author. Character arcs need to be tended to and assessed, plots and sub-plots prioritized and deconflicted, and with just the right narrative voice for each scene. All the while never losing sight of the bigger picture for the secondary world you’ve created.

So, after a few bottles of wine and a couple of cigars, now comes the really important part: the edit. It requires a different part of your brain from the bit that gushed out the words to begin with. The more calculating, ruthless part of the grey matter to be exact. And it’s indispensable to the final product as is the work-over my editor at Solaris will be giving it in a few weeks. As a former journalist, I’m used to having my work ripped apart by editors and as an editor myself I learned how to dish it out too. Invariably, an honest copy-edit always means a better book. And that usually means rewrites.

Without giving too much away, this second book in the Valdur world deals with the consequences of actions taken by the major characters: a religious schism and the launch of a war among the duchies. Whereas Guns of Ivrea dealt primarily with actions on the high seas, for Witch of Torinia, the focus moves to war on land with the scope for some tremendous set-piece medieval battles. To be sure, Captain Danamis will have his fair share of naval derring-do as well as some important secret-squirrel work for the Queen, but this novel really centres on Strykar, my jaded, slightly creaking mercenary and the tough choices he is forced to make. And of course, Brother Acquel’s personal burdens continue to grow as he faces the looming threat posed by Lucinda della Rovera, the titular witch. But an unlikely ally is on the way….

It’s publication week for The Guns of Ivrea, my first secondary-world fantasy which combines traditional epic swashbuckling with a slightly contemporary edge. Set in a renaissance-like Mediterranean world, the story revolves around a set of characters that couldn’t be more different yet find themselves implacably drawn together. It has
mermen and mermaids, monks and mantichora, pirates and princes, ship battles and tavern brawls, and some inter-species romance to boot. You see, I had a conceit to pen a novel that evoked a 15th century-style fantasy, something that might not have been out of place on a table in Milan, Pisa or Venice when the Borgias were throwing their weight around and daVinci was sketching, painting and experimenting. I don’t know if I succeeded but it was a hell of a lot of fun to write it anyway.

It was also a bit of a challenge. The mechanics of writing an adventure novel with an aquatic species of humanoid needed some thinking. People have been writing about merfolk for centuries, but to sustain a mermaid character at book-length, in particular one that has a huge amount of interaction with the world of land-dwelling men, meant I had to consider some new ways of imagining what merfolk would look like. I took a cue from dolphins so my merfolk are actually air-breathing (with great diving abilities like marine mammals), blue-grey skin, and can survive out of the water (for a time). The big difference is that they have two legs. Sorry to disappoint those who have a thing for scales and tails but a woman who is a fish from the waist down tends to put a limit on the scope of a fulfilling romance.

Being an epic fantasy the book naturally has a variety of villains and villainesses, both major and minor. And with a few notable exceptions, most of the inhabitants could be considered to fall in the category of self-interested “grey” rather than white hats. Which, let’s face it, is the way of the world in much of real life. When I first started writing the novel my intention had been to be much more retro and binary: clear good-guys and clear baddies. But very quickly I realised that the possibilities and nuances of the “grey” character would be much more interesting for readers—and the writer. You will find magic in The Guns of Ivrea but no duelling wizards with staffs. It is a much more subtle kind of magic that is supernatural and religious-based, rather than lightning bolts from the fingertips. I found this allowed more scope for building menace and dread around the leading dark character, Lady Lucinda della Rovera.

I’m currently in the final stages on a sequel entitled The Witch of Torinia, which will be published next year. That’s the thing with world-building in fantasy: once those people and places come to life, that world expands and those living in it take the ship’s wheel right out of your hands.

Sometimes you have to prove to yourself you can still do things you did when you were younger, less wise, and with less to worry about. Put it down to male mid-life crisis (but I think I’m past the cut-off date now) or just a longing for a leisure activity that once I devoted inordinate amounts of time to. At any rate, I embarked on a rediscovery of something I last did some 18 years ago. The big question was: am I too old to give it another go?

The “sport” I’m talking about is armoured combat in the SCA. The SCA is the Society of Creative Anachronism, a medieval re-enactment group started up at the University of California at Berkeley in 1966 and that has now gone global. Combat in the SCA (the whole spectrum of medieval arts and sciences is also catered to) involves attempting to recreate medieval tournament combat, on foot, using wooden weapons. While it may not be entirely historically accurate, at least it doesn’t involve silly choreography nor is it another “Battle of the Nations” style bloodbath which uses blunted steel swords (you can check out the latter on You Tube to get a flavour). It’s generally low-risk with high levels of armour and weapons regulations. It’s also physically gruelling: imagine wearing full armour with a wooden shield and sword and then running around like a madman trying to “kill” your opponent—or opponents. It takes bags of stamina. Although there are referees, it’s all based on an honour system where the recipient judges the power of the opponent’s blow and whether or not it is a “kill”. This should not necessarily dent 14- or 16-gauge steel but it does happen.

Me second from right: the little guy in silver armour with the big sword

I had missed armoured combat these past two decades. I first took it up at 17 when armour standards were low and the look was faintly ridiculous. Think cut-down and padded refrigerant canisters for helms and ice hockey gloves for gauntlets and you can form a mental image. But as the 80s roared ahead and life becoming more complicated and with babies arriving in the 90s, the demands of daily life took over. My SCA participation tended to wax and wane. A final burst of SCA once I relocated to the UK petered-out about 1998 after a tournament held at Hever Castle. Now, in 2015, part of me very much wanted one last dash into the breach. Before I was too old to lift a sword again.

I finally convinced myself to get back into fighting again for the purpose of “research”. I reasoned that a refresher in fighting in armour and regaining that unique viewpoint through a narrow eye-slit in a helmet would lend even more accuracy to my fighting and battle scenes in my novels. Well, that was the excuse anyway. Not entirely dishonest either. Even SCA combat can give you an idea of the rigours of medieval fighting: heat exhaustion, muscle fatigue, poor visibility, thirst, etc. Not to mention the role that luck plays on a battlefield. Very good fighters can get beaten by overwhelming numbers or by a boot slipping in muddied grass. You get the idea. Despite that, the thrill keeps you coming back. I do think my experiences have improved my writing of action scenes. I have vivid memories of battle in the United States at the “Pennsic War” where we had over a thousand combatants on each side. I can tell you, the vantage from the field is nothing short of awe-inspiring when you look across to the opposite shield wall, waiting for the cannon to go off.

The bridge between outer tower and inner keep

For the past few months I have been preparing from scratch. New armour and weapons, training with free-weights. However, attending practice sessions was difficult given the distance to the nearest group. That was going to be problematic: my past experience would never be enough to carry me through without some current practice sessions. This past weekend, and continuing all week, the SCA in the UK has held a magnificent event at Raglan Castle in Wales. We actually get to use the castle (or what’s left of it). This was the place where I was to get into harness once again, from a cold start. I suffered some humiliation at the“reauthorisation” where I had to undergo practice combat and armour inspections by the presiding knight marshal to make sure I was competent and not a threat to myself or others. After just two minutes I began to feel like superman after he’s inhaled a kilo of kryptonite dust: my shield arm began sinking lower, my legs felt like lead, my breathing became laboured. It was a worrying start that had me suddenly questioning the entire enterprise.

Skirmish in the fountain court

I passed the tests. The second day we “fought” inside the castle walls with groups of eight fighters on each side attempting to storm or defend the main gate, just a fraction of the forty or so fighters expected to arrive by mid-week. It was frenetic, violent, loud, chaotic—all rather good fun. I had wisely ditched the round shield and armed myself with a two-handed sword. This energy-saving measure plus the mega-surge of adrenalin allowed me to more than hold my own. As a matter of fact, given my age and the length of time out of action, I was damned pleased with my performance. Sure I got “killed” more than a few times. But I gave as good as I got, racking up several “kills” of my own. One against a very seasoned knight and not bad going for a knackered old man-at-arms.

But, O my brothers, the piper had to be paid. After about 90 minutes of bridge fights, courtyard fights and gatehouse fights, I was exhausted. Totally. Even after sitting one of them out. Then the muscle aches set in through arms and legs. I was anachronistically popping ibuprofen for the next 48 hours. Yellow-purple bruise on outer left thigh and what looks like third-degree razor burn on my chin from an ill-fitting gorget fix I had to do. I walked in feeling like Lancelot but walked out looking like Quasimodo. Could have been worse though. I could have just as easily convinced myself I was too old, talked myself out of it, and not even tried.

The team over at Solaris Books very kindly asked me to guest blog for them on their website this week, specifically, to take the chair for their bi-weekly column “Throwback Thursdays”. It’s a nice idea: get Solaris authors to talk about what led to the creation of some of their earlier works. After a bit of head-scratching I launched into how Gideon’s Angel, released in 2013, came to be born. I made the startling (or bone-headed) revelation that in its earliest days it was not a fantasy novel at all. You can find out how and why that literary 180-degree course change happened by just clicking here: www.solarisbooks.com

Cast Iron

Courtesy of the British Fantasy Society, I’ve posted a short story of mine that appeared in the BFS Journal last month. The genesis of this one came about after we moved house a couple of years ago and bought a place that has a massive bread oven from the 1850s in the cellar. Turns out the house was the village bakery in Victorian times so the choice was clear: open a pizzeria or write a story about this wondrous bit of engineering from the past. I chose the latter and you can read the story, Cast Iron, right here.